


Lights Out

by NotGonnaGetUs



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Daleks - Freeform, Death Of A Dalek, No Doctor, No Plot/Plotless, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotGonnaGetUs/pseuds/NotGonnaGetUs
Summary: The final moments and thoughts of the last surviving Dalek, stranded in space, alone and dying.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7
Collections: /r/FanFiction Prompt Challenge #20 / August 2020, The Supreme Minds Of Skaro





	Lights Out

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the r/Fanfiction August 2020 Prompts Challenge, with the random trope of 'Eye Lights Out.'

Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile - Oscar Wilde

The ship was dilapidated, run down, almost literally on its last legs. Countless repairs were needed, along with many parts, tools and other things. Things that just weren't available. The ship was stuck in space, far out where no one could ever hear the signal. Not that anyone would come if it called. The ship had only one occupant, and unfortunately said occupant was not someone that people would come running to rescue. The Daleks were not a race that people expected or even wanted to rescue, if needed. 

This ship had been designed for 10 Daleks to pilot, sent on a small mission to gather intel and other things to bring back to the Dalek mothership. But the details were no longer important. It no longer mattered, not least to the single Dalek that remained. They had lost contact with the mothership a long time ago, and although they hadn’t known it, the Daleks on this ship would become the last surviving Daleks. So far out in space, they had no way of knowing that, as usual, the plans of the Dalek Emperor had been foiled, that there were no more Daleks except them. Now, there was one Dalek left, this one. 

The lone Dalek wandered the ship, assessing the state of it, realising it was essentially a lost cause. No engine, no travel capabilities, no communications, and nobody to fix it. The ship was close to crashing, landing wherever the nearest gravity was. All the systems were failing, or had already failed, in a state beyond any repairs that a single Dalek could do. 

Everyone else on the ship was dead. The specifics of how were no longer important, and soon they would be lost to time itself, never to be recorded in history. The Dalek was the sole survivor, the only one left, surrounded by the remnants of its comrades, empty and dark shells scattered around the ship. 

The Dalek wandered around the ship, unable to really do anything else. There was no contact with the mothership, they were too far away from that, although that would do it no good, not that the Dalek knew that. There would be no rescue, no help, this was it. As it wandered the ship, it thought, about everything it had gone through. The various battles, schemes, plans, missions all in the name of rebuilding the Dalek Empire. Daleks weren’t supposed to feel emotions, not in the way that other species did, but deep inside, this Dalek had always hoped to go out in a blaze of glory, bringing honour to its species, going out like the war machine it was designed to be. Not like this, aimlessly wandering around a broken ship, alone, with no hope of rescue. 

The distress signal was still transmitting, it was automatic when the ship was in such a sorry state, but no one would come. Who would answer a Dalek distress signal? No one. Well, one person would, but this Dalek wasn’t sure that would be a good thing. Maybe it was better to drift aimlessly through space until its own machinery failed it. 

Daleks have no concept of religion, not in the way other species think of it. They think too much of themselves to have any notion of faith in a higher power, of anything beyond the Dalek Empire. All thoughts, all ideas, all beliefs a Dalek could possibly have is directed towards its own species, anything else would be seen as too human. So they have no concept of an afterlife, they are not made to fear death, to hope that there is anything beyond their own empire and their own world. Death is an accepted part of being a Dalek, despite their intentions to survive until the end of existence itself. That didn’t necessarily make it easier, when the Dalek had nothing else to do but wait for death.

If it could have, the Dalek would have laughed. Something in its systems really was failing, if it was getting like this, all melancholy and thoughtful, as much as it could be. It was supposed to be a machine, a loyal servant, essentially, to the Dalek Emperor. It was supposed to follow orders, not sit around and ponder its own death. Not that it really mattered, no one else was around. 

History wouldn’t record the situation of the last living Dalek, stranded in space, away from everyone and everything. The history books of the future would never record the true end of the Daleks, instead focusing on the mothership, the Emperor, the main faction. They would be recorded as going out in a blaze of fire and fury, caught in the clutches of the Oncoming storm, in an ending that befits their status, as one of the most feared races in the universe, one of the most brutal. 

Its systems were failing, it could feel them slowly shutting down. Its weapons were no longer functional, navigation was getting harder to fully control, and slowly its speech capabilities were diminishing. It was shutting down, system by system. Whatever had wiped out the rest of the crew was slowly affecting this last surviving Dalek. 

It’s eye stalk was the last thing to go, the light that showed the Dalek was still alive. The blue light ran on a separate system, requiring less power and less intricate systems than it’s weapons or its speech capabilities. It seemed almost poetic, that it would be the last part of it to go out. The light that had struck fear into so many who saw it, would soon be going out, for the final time.

Systems failing, there was nothing more that the Dalek could do, but wait for everything to fail. Slowly, bit by bit, it succumbed to the pull of darkness, as it stopped moving, as it’s blue light went out. The Dalek had died. 

The true end to the Daleks was not in a blaze of glory, but in the slow dimming of a blue light, surrounded by nothing and no one. 

No one here gets out alive - Jim Morrison


End file.
